Steganography Basic – The art of hiding Data Within Data

Steganography Basic – The art of hiding Data Within Data

Steganography doesn’t use algorithms to encrypt data, instead it hides a data in another type of media, so it effectively conceals the data hidden within a type of media. This type of cryptography is similar to an invisible ink method, where it can only be revealed to someone who knows the trick to revealing it. It’s basically a security through obscurity method. A simple example: (Sally Eats Crackers Rarely, but she decided to Eat one Today) ‘Secret’, its a secret code created by combining all the capital letters. But it can get more complicated, such as, by using a certain number “2341249823985234” and pulling the numbered letters from a big text file.

This method is commonly used in image or digital files online (chaffing and winnowing are some examples), so that a company who owns the files can prove its ownership. These types of files contain insignificant data bits so that the data can be hidden without affecting the original file enough to be detected. If it contains too much data, people will know that there’s something hidden within the file (most people don’t).

A simple way to find out if the file contains a hidden data is by subtracting the new file from the original file. Getting an + or – result means something exists.

The method of combining encryption and steganogrphy make it even harder to crack the original data intended. Some methods are so advanced that only the users on the deep web utilizes it. Here’s a generic example: original file + hidden data + key = new file